


I could love you more than life (If I wasn’t so afraid)

by serenadreams



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Musician/Dancer AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-12
Updated: 2016-02-12
Packaged: 2018-05-19 13:18:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5968669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/serenadreams/pseuds/serenadreams
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’s a singer who has a past as heartbreaking as his lyrics. She’s a dancer who casts her whole body into every movement as she does with her heart in life. </p><p>All it takes is one look.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I could love you more than life (If I wasn’t so afraid)

**Author's Note:**

> Well I came across this in my fic folder today.. Apparently I wrote it nearly two years ago!!! It's basically already written, there are just a few things I need to add, so I figured why not just go ahead and post it?? So here we have yet another Damien Rice heavy music au... I'm sorry in advance.

_You could be my favorite taste to touch my tongue_

_I know someone who could serve me love_

_But it wouldn’t fill me up_

_You could have my favorite face and favorite name_

_I know someone who could play the part_

_But it wouldn’t be the same_

 

The moment Oliver Queen lays eyes on her, he knows he’s fucked. His heart aches from simply watching her. Her joy, her animation, her beauty. It hits him right in the chest in the best way possible and he can’t tear his eyes away.

He’s roughened and cynical and all he really lives for these days is music. A product of heartbreak and destruction, his songs have made him famous even as they tear at his soul. He’s an unshaven singer with fingers calloused from strings, and a messy history in every aspect imaginable.

She’s a dancer. A blonde vision of light and happiness who casts her whole body into every movement as she does with her heart in life.

He knows they’ll wreck each other. He knows he needs to walk away the second he hears her laugh and feels that tug in his chest that can only mean trouble. But he doesn’t. Because he’s always been a selfish bastard.

So he watches her for hours, drinking in every little detail. Her small, curvy body, the lightness of her feet, the bright pink of her lips a contrast against the white of her clothes. The hair that flies around her head, free and wild unlike the tight knots he’s used to seeing from dancers. He drinks her in. Revels in her.

And when she notices, when her eyes meet his, he’s done for. Fucking done for.

He goes back again and again. To that studio, just to see her. Just to get his fix.

He learns a little about her. Her name.

Felicity.

 _Felicity_.

But he never talks to her. He watches as she dances and laughs, standing just on the edge of her circle of light. Barely dipping a toe in, never taking a step closer.

Her studio is right next to where he records, so he likes to think he has good enough reason to be there. That he’s not just going back to see her. It’s a lie, of course.

His mother used to tell him that when you start lying to yourself, you know that you need to make a change. He’s been lying to himself for years now. About everything really. The only honest expression he has is music. And maybe that’s why he does it. To tell the truth. Even if just for a five-minute stretch of melancholy chords.

Which is why, after a week or two, he writes a song about her. The girl he doesn’t know, who’s lodged herself in his dying heart.

_You could be my favorite faded fantasy._

_I’ve laid my happiness on what it all could be._

The words fall from his lips without prompt, his mind lingering on images of her spinning around the room, as light and happy as a carefree bird in the wind.

He sits on his bed, fingers strumming across his guitar, notebook lying beside him, and lets the song write itself. As all the others have before it.

He writes a love song for a girl he’s never exchanged a single word with. He writes a love song full of hope and _want_ for the first time in years. It’s not about destruction and despair, it’s about what _could_ be. If he were a braver man. If he were a better man.

And as the prose drift from his lips, fingers gentle against the strings, his heart aches. Because this girl doesn’t even know him. Doesn’t care about him. Doesn’t love him. And nor should she. He’s not someone worthy of that. Of being loved by someone like her; young and beautiful and full of life.

His obsession is unhealthy and creepy and he hates himself just a little bit more for it. But he doesn’t stop. Because for seven years his life has been darkness with mere patches of light here and there. And when he finds one of those patches, he tries desperately to hang onto it for as long as possible. Until inevitably, he snuffs it out.

When he records the song, there’s that moment of pure freedom in his heart, as there always is. When he thinks that he could overcome it all, get better, _be_ better. He rides an adrenaline high after every recording and every performance, and it’s in those moments that he feels like himself again. Or the him of before. Before the storm that took away everything. Back when he was nothing but a thrill and pleasure seeker. Always looking for the next source of entertainment. Always living life as hard and wild as he could.

He’s not that man anymore. He’s fractured and scarred. Inside and out.

But riding that high, fresh from laying down a new track, that’s what gives him the nudge to do it.

And that’s how they meet. Officially. Despite the fact that he’s pretty sure he could draw her face to perfection with his eyes closed, if he could draw. Despite the fact that he just wrote a love song about her. Despite the fact that her name has been on a loop in his brain since he first heard it.

She’s sitting against a wall in the studio, a tablet resting on her knees, when he walks over, holds out his hand and says;

“Hi. I’m Oliver Queen.”

 

_You could hold the secrets that save me from myself_

_I could love you more than love could_

_All the way from hell_

_And you could be my poison, my cross, my razor blade_

_I could love you more than life if I wasn’t so afraid_

_Of what it all could be_

_Of what it all could be_

_With you_


End file.
